Traveller beat FASA’s Star Trek and TSR’s Star Frontiers into my hot little hands by a few months, being a gift from the drafters in my mom’s department at Eaton. The little black books catapulted me into a world beyond fantasy RPGs. D&D was all I had played for the first months of my RPG journey- specifically, Basic and Expert D&D from the Mentzer boxed sets. Traveller was a revelation. And the amount of imagination fodder in those books, and The Traveller Book, which basically combined Books 0, 1, 2, and 3 had me sitting in the living room building ships, planets, and all manner of places to go.
Traveller uses 2d6 for most rolls, known here as Throws. There are some cool ideas I still love today, like the UPP. The Universal Personality Profile is a six character code that sums up the basic attributes of a character, since each attribute, Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing are expressed in hexadecimal. So a 10 becomes an A, an 11 is a B, and so forth. Thus, a character who is strong, but in all other ways average would be expressed as B77777.
Traveller also introduced me to the idea of starting characters that weren’t “first level” newbies. Traveller uses a system of four-year terms of service, in which an 18-year old enrolls to begin their life. A character must roll to enter a career, failure means being drafted. Once in, rolls are made to determine what skills are learned, if the character advances in rank or position, and even if the character survives. It is possible to be killed during a career. Something often made light of, but just as often house-ruled. It’s time to see just what the dice have in store for today’s character. We’ll be using the 1977 Book One: Characters and Combat.
Character Creation System:
So, let’s generate that UPP. Dice at the ready, we get 11, 8, 7, 2, 11, 10. Well, that’s pretty damn good… save for that 2. Since they go in order, this gives us a UPP of B872BA. This means our character starts life as a very strong, very well-educated well-to-do young woman lacking a bit (or a lot) in the intelligence department. Next, per the book, we name her. The example character I remember from Traveller was Captain Alexander Lascelles Jamison, so I kind of want to have an equally impressive name. At Social A, she is just short of knighthood, so doesn’t have a title, but is certainly upper class. How about Victoria Georgianna Wilbury?
Victoria attempts to follow the family tradition of serving in the Navy, looking at the Navy tables, it is clear Social Standing and Education both give a leg up. Her low intelligence means she’ll miss out on a couple of bonuses, but the Navy is the prestige service. We’ll need to roll 8+ to get in, with a +2 bonus due to her Education of B. The dice say 4+6, +2 is 12. She’s in the Navy. The Survival roll is 5+, with a +2 bonus for an average or better Intelligence. 5+3 is 8, Victoria survives her first four years in the Navy. She tries for an officer’s commission, and needs a 10+, with a bonus of +1 due to her Social. 4+1 is 5, even with the bonus, it’s no joy. A roll of 6+ is required for re-enlistement, a roll that must be made even if the character wishes to leave the service. The reason? On a 12 the service decides they can’t do without you. Victoria rolls 3+2=5. Ouch. The Navy has decided Victoria’s services are no longer needed after her first four years.
Every character receives two skills for their first term. In Traveller, a skill level is a pretty big deal. Someone with Medical-3 is an MD. My personal headcanon has always been Skill-0 is enough to do a job, Skill-1 is a BA, Skill-2 and MA, and Skill-3 a PhD. Players choose which table to use to determine skills. The choices are Personal Development, Service Skills, Advanced Education, and a second Advanced Education table that is only available to characters with an Education of 8+, like Victoria. So, we’ll let her take a roll on that table, and one on Personal Development. 3 on Advanced Education 8+ gets her the Engineering skill at Level-1. Rolling a 2 for Personal Development nets Victoria a +1 Dexterity, changing her UPP to B972BA.
Victoria must now muster out of the Navy at age 22. She has one term of service, so she receives one roll on either the Cash Allowance or Material Benefits table. We’re going to go for stuff. A 4, Victoria receives a Blade. Since she can choose which kind of Blade she is gifted, she takes a Cutlass. If she had more benefits, and rolled this again, she would have the option to get skill in the use of the Cutlass instead. Out of curiosity, that 4 would have scored her cr10,000, enough to buy 100 Cutlasses. Damn. What we were hoping for was a 5, which would have gotten Victoria inducted into the Traveller’s Aid Society. The TAS is an organization that provides shelter and assistance to members, as well as paying dividends in the form of ship passages that can be sold for hard cash.
Since her career was cut off so quickly, I feel like explaining some things that might have happened. In 1977 Little Black Book traveller, only officer ranks are recorded for ex-military characters, so Victoria’s enlisted rank is left up to us, and confers no mechanical benefit. Had she gained her commission, she would have gotten additional skill rolls. If she had achieved a higher officer rank, she would have gotten additional mustering out benefits. Had she stayed until retirement, she would have had a pension… and had to roll for aging.
While it is tempting to stay in service and get lots of skills and benefits, especially in the Merchant and Scout services where mustering out benefits include ships of your own, once your character hits age 38, they begin to roll saving throws to see if their Strength, Dex, and Endurance begin to degrade. Starting at age 70, Intelligence can begin to go as well. This causes character creation to become a real risk-reward game. Can you deal with a Merchant Captain who is past middle age and frail, but hey, owns his own ship?
The Character:
Victoria Georgianna Wilbury was born to privilege- money, an opulent home on Regina, the subsector capital, and all the luxuries one could want. What she lacked was a firm understanding of how to deal with the less fortunate. Throughout her private education, she became increasingly disconnected from the realities of self-reliance to such an extent that upon graduating college with a Master’s Degree in liberal arts, it was decided for her that she needed to see a bit of the real world outside of wealth and academia. Her father attempted to find her a place at the Naval Academy, but her lack of interpersonal skills and inexperience with practical matters dashed those hopes. Georgianna ended up enlisted in the Regina Subsector Navy, where she unexpectedly performed extremely well in physical tasks and showed a surprising knack for starship engineering despite her focus on sports and soft subjects in college. She was certified as an Engineer’s Mate, and was primed for advancement to the petty officer grades. Her instructors held her back, citing her continued need to learn interpersonal skills before being placed in charge of other spacers, but this mark on her record came at a time where Regina’s fleet was looking to divest itself of a percentage of their overall strength due to budgetary concerns. Victoria was released from service at the end of her tour, with nothing but a commemorative Cutlass and a drive technician certification to her name. She must now decide if she will return to the family lands, humbled and a bit wiser, or seek to prove she can make it on her own.
My Thoughts:
This process, right here, is one of the reasons I absolutely love character creation that has a “lifepath” element to it. Traveller was the first game where I encountered it, but thankfully it wasn’t the last. Even the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons incorporates “backgrounds” to put a bit of this into the process.
Traveller has always been a favorite of mine. I love being able to roll up everything from characters to ships to mercenary contradicts to planets… hell, entire star sectors. Many of the games I’m passionate about have distinctly Traveller-esque elements. I’m looking at you, Stars Without Number and MechWarrior First Edition. Rolling up Victoria was the kind of mental exercise in story crafting I love to do, in a game I dearly enjoy. I could do 31 Days of Traveller characters alone, and with the expanded character creation in books like Mercenary and High Guard, as well as the extra professions in Citizens of the Imperium, you’d never hear the same story twice.
Traveller. To paraphrase the t-shirt, have you even lived if you haven’t died in character creation?
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